


Blue Hues

by bette (ferns)



Category: The Flash (Comics), The Flash (TV 2014), The Flash - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Bisexual Cisco Ramon, Domestic Fluff, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Jewish Characters, M/M, Magic, Murder, Mutual Pining, Past Child Abuse, Protective Joe West, Raising children, Slice of Life, Slow Burn, Torture, Trans Cisco Ramon, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Characters, all of them. they're all jews., autistic characters, does this count as, later chapters do probably, more stuff to be added but i promise these tags are needed, probably transformers references
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-17
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-16 10:43:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11827077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/bette
Summary: Malcolm Thawne would do pretty much anything to get custody of the two children that Barry and Iris left behind after their tragic and untimely deaths.Luckily, they've been placed in the care of Cisco Ramon, who's willing to let Malcolm live in the same house as the three of them-as long as he reforms and becomes an upstanding citizen instead of a supervillain....It shouldn't be that hard, right?





	1. Azure

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone, welcome to the fic that Kepler is partially responsible for and encouraged. They get a shoutout right here because they're the whole reason this exists, honestly. 
> 
> Warnings will be at the start of each chapter, although after the first few and some scattered ones in between most chapters probably won't need them.
> 
> Just to avoid confusion, here are some quick notes because this fic has a lot of trans/nonbinary characters in it and the situation with Dawn is complicated: Dawn is a trans girl, and before she comes out the name Henry is used for her along with he/him pronouns. That changes immediately after she comes out, which happens when she's very young. Additionally, Barry was genderfluid but primarily used he/him pronouns.
> 
> Warnings: implied past child abuse, major character death, near child death (it doesn't actually occur), blood, and other things that come with corpses. As per usual, let me know if I should warn for anything in particular.

Malcolm Thawne stood in front of his brother’s house, hands tucked behind his back, wearing the second-nicest clothes he owned, and debated turning right around and heading home. Yes, Barry had said that if he wanted, he could visit the twins as long as Barry and Iris were there to make sure nothing happened to them-they were his family, after all, some of the only family he had left that wasn’t completely terrible. Or at least he assumed that they wouldn’t be. There was plenty of time for them to grow up to be horrible people.

_ Pull yourself together,  _ Malcolm told himself, which, ironically, was the same thing that he told himself pretty much every day. It had yet to work, however. According to Lisa, he was still the same disaster zone that he had been when he first joined the Rogues. (‘Joined’ wasn’t really the best word. More like… He got drunk at Saints and Sinners and woke up next to Hartley Rathaway, who invited him to join his gang, much to the chagrin of one Leonard Snart.)  _ How bad could it be? _

He walked up the steps, trying to ignore the urge to turn around and run away as fast as he possibly could. Before he could lose his nerve altogether, Malcolm hesitantly knocked on the door, squeezing his eyes shut as he braced himself-he fully expected Barry to yell at him and tell him to get the hell away from his wife and children. Not that Malcolm would blame him in the least-he  _ was  _ technically a criminal, after all, and not all of his crimes had been non-violent.

He was probably the  _ last  _ person that Barry would want to see right now. Or ever. And most of the time, Malcolm would’ve felt the same way. Barry’s face (and lately, Malcolm’s own in the mirror) was just a reminder of everything that he could’ve had, everything that he  _ hadn’t  _ had. A family that loved him and cared about him and didn’t hurt him and-and-

Goddamn, he was sappy when he was tired (he’d stayed up all night worrying). Kind of a mess, too. He’d shaved for his visit, using Len’s mirror and sink and a razor ‘borrowed’ from Lisa. And while he wasn’t wearing a suit (maybe he should have?) he  _ was  _ wearing a nice shirt and the cleanest pants that he could find, even if the edges were a little scorched. Malcolm still didn’t really look like someone who belonged in a neighborhood as nice as this one, but… By his standards, he looked downright polished.

Malcolm knocked again, a little louder this time. Maybe Barry or Iris had seen him and decided that they were going to pretend that they weren’t home? Maybe they really weren’t home. Their car was in the driveway-Barry may have had superspeed, but Iris certainly didn’t, and her husband couldn’t always run her to work every morning-but they could’ve been out for a walk or something…

No. They had to be home. Malcolm  _ was  _ going to see his niblings today. This may have been his only chance to actually, really meet them, and he’d been putting it off for months. Malcolm  _ had  _ to see them. He had to. Which meant that even though Barry was probably going to chase him off and arrest him, he was going inside.

Pushing the door open, Malcolm awkwardly cleared his throat and rubbed the back of his neck, closing his eyes for a moment. “Uh, hey, Barry, I-” Keeping his eyes closed, he shook his head. He was  _ Cobalt Blue, _ he was a  _ supervillain, _ he wasn’t somebody who stuttered at the thought of seeing his family. “I’m here to see the kids.”

Malcolm opened his eyes and immediately regretted it.

He’d seen a lot of messed up stuff, of course. He was a villain, a Rogue, he stole things and he’d killed people in the past. Not a lot of people, and it was always, always an accident, but… Still. Malcolm had seen a lot of stuff, but that didn’t mean that there weren’t certain things that still scared him, and this was one of them.

Barry, his  _ brother,  _ his mirror image, was lying on the floor, a hole in his chest that was still leaking blood with no pulse behind it. His body was half curled over on its side in what might’ve been an attempt to shield Iris, who was on the floor beside him in a puddle of her own already drying blood. As Malcolm watched, her breathing stuttered to a stop, and his legs buckled as he pitched forward, collapsing onto his knees. His fingers twitched as he reached for the pair, fingers turning blue in a futile attempt to heal them.

One of Malcolm’s hands found Barry’s, still warm but no longer humming with lightning, and he pulled him  _ (him?  _ Malcolm didn’t know, not today) closer, fingers smearing in the blood. No two fingerprints were alike, but Malcolm was barely aware that he was implicating himself for the crime. He tugged Barry up into his lap and closed his eyes (wasn’t that what you were supposed to do for dead people? Close their eyes? Wasn’t that what you were supposed to  _ do?),  _ gently setting him back down in the exact same position that he had been before.

And Iris…

Malcolm had only met her a few times, and she’d punched him several of those times. She was a good puncher, a good reporter, and a good person. According to Barry, Iris had a strong sense of justice, which was probably why she had punched him, in all fairness. He’d totally deserved it, after all. That didn’t really make the punch hurt any less, though.

Wait.

Iris-Iris had been  _ breathing  _ when he’d walked in. He’d  _ watched  _ her stop (he could’ve saved her he could’ve saved her he could’ve saved her). But that wound… Malcolm, considering the people he ran with, knew his wounds, and that one was fatal within minutes. Both of them had been, although Barry’s-Barry’s must have been worse than it looked, otherwise he would have healed.

Which meant that the wounds were recent. They were  _ new.  _ Which meant that…

Malcolm ran up the stairs, towards what he felt rather than heard was there even though he hadn’t known that the room the twins stayed in was upstairs until that exact second. A clawed hand made of flames spread out from his palm, grabbing the shadowy figure ahead of him and yanking them backwards away from the cribs. Malcolm’s eyes burned cerulean, the color tinted away from cobalt by his tears and by his anger.  _ “Don’t touch them!” _

The killer-that was who it must have been, unless there were two of them-turned around just in time to be grabbed by a second hand and shoved out the door, the extension of power pushing them down the stairs. Malcolm reached down and grabbed the kids, his kids, his  _ nephews,  _ holding them as close as he dared while surrounding himself with a protective semi-structured armor of blue flame.

He ran down the stairs, clutching the tiny twins to his chest, a set of gauntlets forming around his hands as he got ready to finish the job if the killer was still alive.

They weren’t. In their fall down the stairs, they had accidentally stabbed themself twice with their knife, probably the same one that they had used to kill Iris, since Barry had obviously been shot. Malcolm stood over them as they bled out, watching with sick satisfaction as he made no moves to heal them. Why should he? They were a murderer, they didn’t deserve  _ anything.  _ (Yes, Malcolm was fully aware that many of the people he ran with were also murderers, and he’d killed people before, but at least his friends had made an effort to put that life behind them.)

In Malcolm’s arms, one of the twins started to cry, and that was when Malcolm ran.

* * *

Malcolm was halfway home when he realized that he had made a mistake. Not only did he have no idea how to care for a child (let alone  _ two _ children), he technically didn’t have a home. Malcolm was living in the basement of one of his friend’s safe houses, which meant that while he usually had the whole place to himself, it still wasn’t technically his. (Legally, it belonged to Stuart Frost, because  _ someone  _ couldn’t resist making fucking puns, but Snart let him stay there as long as he didn’t destroy it or draw any heroic attention to it.)

That was also around the time that one of the kids in his arms, the smaller one, started to cry. That set the other one off, and before he knew it Malcolm was juggling two crying babies in his arms. It would’ve been near impossible for him to keep ahold of them if he hadn’t been able to use his powers to carefully hold them, trying to comfort them as well as he could. Not that he had any idea what he was doing. The larger twin was screaming now, face scrunched up, and Malcolm didn’t have a clue what he was supposed to do to stop it.

Just before he could use an extension of his abilities to push the door open, it opened from the inside, revealing Len, leaning against the door with his arms crossed and his gun clipped around his waist. He was still wearing that stupid-ass parka, and his glare was fixed on the two kids in Malcolm’s arms. “Why the hell are you bringing babies to my safehouse? You’re going to draw the attention of the whole neighborhood.”

“I had to,” Malcolm panted, face covered in sweat and shaking with exertion from literally running halfway across the city. There was a stitch in his side and his throat felt like it had been slashed with sandpaper. He had no idea how Barry was able to-how Barry  _ had been  _ able to do this at superspeed. “They were-there was-I couldn’t-”

“Slow down,” Len interrupted, grabbing Malcolm’s arm and roughly dragging him into the house. “What’s going on? Who are the? And why do you look so… Nice?”

Malcolm shook his head, vision blurry and eyes burning with tears. “I-I-” He took a deep breath and sat down on the sofa, the twins’ crying making his head pound and his ears ring. “There was-I went to see Barry. I needed to see-I’d put it off long enough, almost a year, I-” He looked down at the kids in his lap. “These are his.”

“You stole your own brother’s kids?” Len raised his eyebrows, looking at them. Malcolm held them closer, suddenly achingly aware of the dried blood on his hands. “Where did the blood come from?”

Malcolm made a squeaking sound like a rusty hinge at the back of his throat. “When I got there, I-there was-I couldn’t-someone had-”

“Stop,” Len interrupted, and Malcolm did gladly. He was shaking all over, eyes flashing electric blue as his hands trembled. “Barry’s dead, isn’t he.” Malcolm looked at the floor as the tears started to fall, and Len swore under his breath. “Who was it? Who killed the Flash?”

“I don’t know,” Malcolm muttered, “I don’t know, but they’re dead. I killed them. They’re dead. They can’t hurt the kids. They can’t hurt the kids. They’ll never hurt the kids.” He held them against his chest. “They can’t hurt my kids.”

“Iris is dead too?” Len said it like he already knew the answer, but Malcolm nodded anyways. Len narrowed his eyes. “So what are you going to do with the kids? I don’t recommend the foster care system, but Detective West will probably find a good home for them-”

Malcolm punched Len in the face as hard as he could, a fist of blue fire forming and smashing into the older man’s jaw. “Don’t you dare-don’t you  _ dare-”  _ Malcolm’s chest heaved. “I’m not going to give my kids up. Ever. They’re  _ mine.  _ They were Barry’s and now they’re mine.”

“They must have had a will,” Len remarked. “Someone who was supposed to take care of them in case they died. Do you know who it was? I doubt they wanted you to be the one to take them.”

Malcolm wanted to punch him again, but he couldn’t let go of the kids and he’d already made too many constructs for one day. Besides, all his energy was spent. And he knew that Len was telling the truth. Barry never loved him, hardly knew him much less liked him, there’s no way that he’d be the ideal candidate to take care of his  _ children.  _ “I don’t know. I never-I don’t know where their will is, or who…”

“Well,” Len said, sitting down in the cushy chair across from Malcolm, “it’d be someone close to the family. Godmother or godfather, maybe.” He narrowed his eyes even further. “Ramon or Snow.”

Malcolm frowned a little. He knew who they were, of course-or more accurately, he knew their alter egos, but he still knew them. He was less familiar with Vibe than he was with Killer Frost-hadn’t she ran with the Rogues for awhile? Gone from hero to villain and back again? It was complicated. All he really knew about Vibe was that he could control vibrational blasts, his real name was Cisco Ramon, and he was Barry’s best friend next to Iris.

(And of course there was that incident a few years ago with the explosion and the sky opening up and the Flash almost dying, the one where the man in armor had almost killed him, the one where everything seemed to have started going wrong. Vibe had been a major part of that, Malcolm knew.)

That didn’t matter. It didn’t matter how much Barry had trusted them. Barry was dead, and that meant that the kids were Malcolm’s now. They were  _ his  _ and he wasn’t going to let go of them. Never. If he couldn’t protect Barry and Iris, he’d protect them. He had to. Malcolm may have hated Barry, so much so that it physically manifested in the form of his powers, but that didn’t mean that Malcolm hated his niblings. They hadn’t done anything yet, they were tiny and helpless and with little waving fists and chubby legs and eyes that Malcolm could already tell were going to be a copy of Iris’s one day.

They were  _ his  _ kids now, and nobody was going to take them away from him. Nobody. Not Len, not Vibe and Killer Frost, not the police, nobody. They were his and he was going to protect them and love them no matter what, even if they did turn out to be criminals one day. Hell, they probably would, considering the fact that he was going to be their role model along with the rest of the Rogues. He didn’t want all of them around, not the ones that had killed people for fun in the past, but he’d probably need their help.

One of the kids made a small squeaking sound, and Malcolm looked down at them. Their tiny clenched fist waved in the air, and he automatically bumped his knuckles against it before realizing that a little baby would have no concept of a fist bump and probably wouldn’t for awhile. Len rolled his eyes. “He’s hungry. Did you even think about how you were going to  _ feed  _ them, dumbass?”

“...No,” Malcolm admitted. “It doesn’t matter, does it? You can just steal some baby food and diapers or something.”

Len made a frustrated noise. “You-they need a  _ real  _ home! You’re a  _ criminal!  _ And what are you going to do to support them, huh? You can’t get a job, you can’t just steal money. What if you get caught? Who’s going to look after the kids?”

“I’ll break out,” Malcolm countered. “You’ve done it about twenty times, and I’ve had tons of practice escaping from police custody.”

Len rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I can’t talk you out of this, can I?”

“Nope.” Malcolm pressed his nose against the other baby’s stomach, making it giggle and kick its tiny fat legs. There was a small humming sound, and a little jolt of lighting hopped up and zapped the tip of Malcolm’s nose. He yelped and jerked back, automatically clapping his hands to his face and adjusting the position of his knees so that the two kids wouldn’t fall. He stared down at the kid. “Oh man…”

“Well,” Len said after a long moment of silence, “it looks like he takes after your brother.”

“Oh god,” Malcolm groaned. His hands came up to grip at his hair and his breathing went fast. “I can’t do this, I can’t do this, I can’t do this, I’m not-I can’t be a father to two  _ metas _ what if I hurt them what if I end up doing something to them with my powers, what if I try to cut off their connection to that… Whatever that force is and it ends up doing something bad, what if I hurt them-”

“We’ll help you. Hartley’s sister, Jerrie, she’s got some babysitting experience. I think. She can watch them if you need a break, and Mick loves kids.” Len’s demeanor seemed to have entirely turned around, and Malcolm couldn’t even bring himself to be confused or angry. He was mostly just tired. And worried. And numb. And still in denial that B-that his brother and I-and his sister-in-law were… Were…

“Mick is also an arsonist with a criminal record a mile long,” Malcolm hissed, flapping his hands anxiously. “I’m  _ not  _ letting them go into the system, but… I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I don’t think I can do this.”

“You're an arsonist too. And I didn’t think I could raise Lisa,” Len snapped, “and she turned out just fine.”

_ “Neither  _ of you are sparkling examples of citizenship,” Malcolm snapped. “I don’t know how to do anything with kids, the only kids I was ever around were my baby cousins, and  _ none  _ of my family is a very good example of parenting! What if I turn out like that? What if I hurt these kids, my kids,  _ Barry’s  _ kids? I can’t live with that!”

Len grabbed Malcolm’s shoulders. “You won’t. You literally made sure that every kid got out of that heist you pulled a month ago unharmed. You’ll do fine.” He turned around and stalked off. “Shawna left some baby food in the fridge. They should be old enough to be eating that stuff.”

“Why did Shawna have baby food?” Malcolm blinked and hugged the twins close to his chest.

“I don’t know, but she lifted it the other week.”

Malcolm looked down at the kids. “I’m gonna keep you safe,” he whispered. “Okay? I’m gonna keep you safe and I’m gonna make sure that nobody ever hurts you again. I swear. I-I know I couldn’t save your mom and dad, but I saved you two.”

* * *

Joe knocked on the door of his kids’ house. He usually would’ve just walked right in, but he’d stopped doing that after coming to find Barry’s hand up Iris’s shirt and Iris’s hand down Barry’s pants. That was burnt into his mind forever, and since then he had started knocking (much to Iris and Barry’s collective relief).

When nobody answered, Joe frowned. He knew from experience that ringing the doorbell when you had young kids was a  _ terrible  _ idea, but… They should’ve remembered that he was coming, right? They must’ve forgotten about their trip to the zoo. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his copy of the key, unlocking and opening the door. They probably wouldn’t mind if he let himself in.

Joe opened the door. “H-”

All of the air left his lungs.

Barry and Iris were on the floor in a pool of dried blood, smears dried on the floor. Joe knew with sickening certainty that they had been dragged apart, potentially before Barry had even been fully dead. Their eyes were closed, blood staining the front of their shirts. Joe almost threw up.  _ No, no, no, no- _ this couldn’t have been real. It couldn’t have been. His kids couldn’t’ve been dead.

He took a small step forward, almost slipping in the not quite congealed blood that stained the floor. His eyes automatically went to the lump on the floor at the bottom of the stairs. There were footprints in the blood, dried there now, and a corpse on the floor. Far too big to be either of the twins, larger than both of their tiny bodies put together, and when Joe moved a little closer he saw that the person had accidentally stabbed themselves with their own knife, a gun stuck carelessly in their waistband.

The killer. The person who had  _ murdered  _ his  _ children.  _ They were dead. Dead. Dead. Dead. This couldn’t have been happening. This couldn’t have been happening. It had been bad enough seeing Barry hurt time and time again, seeing Wally charge headlong into danger and hurt himself, seeing Cisco start going out as a hero, seeing all of his kids keep getting hurt-

But they couldn’t have been dead. It just wasn’t possible. They couldn’t have been dead, they just-they just  _ couldn’t  _ have been.

_ (Denial is the first stage of grief, _ a nasty little voice whispered at the back of his mind.  _ Denial is the first stage of grief.) _

Something jolted in his brain, and Joe took off for the upstairs.  _ The kids! _

He burst into the room, eyes wide and horrified. No, no, no-the crib was empty, although to Joe’s relief there was no blood anywhere inside of it, no tiny corpses. But there were bloody footprints on the floor, a few splatters on the ground, and a large scorch mark across the wall. No, no, no…

With shaking hands, Joe reached for his phone, eyes burning with tears that wouldn’t fall through his shock.


	2. Baby

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Linda is dating Wally but Malcolm doesn't know that, he just knows that Linda is dating Shawna (Shawna isn't dating Wally). This whole chapter is literally just. talking to Linda while she grows steadily more horrified because Malcolm fucked up big time.
> 
> Warnings: lots of talk of murder, implied past child abuse, unsafe child raising practices (Malcolm leaves the twins with Lisa Snart).

The day that the obituary was released, Malcolm broke into the CCPN building.

It was five days after he first broke into the house, three days after the grief really started hitting him, and three hours after he read the obituary. And maybe ‘broke in’ isn’t the right term, because there’s not much to break into. He just slammed the door open in full costume, the cape fluttering behind him and almost getting caught in the doors as they closed (luckily, they didn't, because Malcolm knew they would never take him seriously if that happened. For a second time), with bags under his eyes from having had only a few hours of sleep since he'd found Barry and Iris's bodies.

He was there to see the person who wrote the obituary.

Usually it would’ve been a family member, but Malcolm knew that it had actually been one of the reporters-a sports reporter who was a friend of Iris’s. Shawna had been the one to tell him-something about knowing her personally (and the expression that she gave him made him as she told him have little doubt as to what kind of ‘personally’ that was). Linda Park. Apparently she’d been devastated by the death, and had managed to convince the editor that she could be the one to write the obituary.

“Linda Park,” he said, coughing a little and waving to hopefully get her attention. A woman stood up and hesitantly made her way over to him, eyes narrowing as she caught sight of his face (even if it was partially obscured to protect his identity). “I need to talk to you.”

She crossed her arms as her coworkers ducked down underneath desks all around her, taking cover from the perceived supervillain attack. “What do you want, Cobalt?” She sounded like her nose was stuffed, and Malcolm was pretty sure that she had been crying. He’d been crying too. “My friends died the other day. I’m not in the mood to be held hostage.”

“I just-I just wanted to thank you. For something.” Mal took a deep breath. “When you wrote the obituary for-for Barry and-and Iris-” He could feel hot tears pushing against his eyes and forced them back. “You-uh, you-for Barry, you used-I-thank you. For not using…”

“I don’t get it,” Linda said, looking completely and utterly baffled. “I just didn’t think that Caitlin and Cisco were up for doing it…”

“No. You-when you were writing it, when you were talking about Barry, you used… You used neutral words. Thank you. Um, for that. Yeah.” Malcolm hugged himself nervously. This was  _stupid_ why had he even come here this had been a  _huge_ mistake-but he was here now and there wasn't much he could do except keep going.

“That… It wasn’t a problem, I wasn’t going to start disrespecting em just because… Just because…” Linda swallowed. At Malcolm’s confused look, she elaborated a little. “I. We were friends, we dated for a little bit, a  _ long  _ time ago. I’ve known since then. And the day that ey died, these were the pronouns ey were using. But-how did you know-”

Malcolm looked at the people crouching behind the desks, all expecting him to start shouting demands or ordering them to film him. “Not… Not here. Not with everybody here. Later today? At like… Three o’clock? I have to find someone to watch the kids, I don’t know if Lisa will be up for it again-”

“Huh?” Linda blinked, but Malcolm kept going.

“-But I can probably meet at like, say, that bakery on 23rd and Wheaton?” Malcolm shifted a little. This was such a bad move, this was a  _ terrible  _ move, but he was exhausted from grief and dealing with small children and he’d been making a lot of terrible decisions ever since Barry died, so… One more couldn’t hurt. Besides, talking to Linda Park might be good for him. Getting to know someone who had been friends with Barry before he’d been killed…

Linda Park nodded slowly. “Okay. I-sure. I guess. I’ll be there."

She didn't mention the pepper spray in her purse, the gun, or the knife that she kept on her at all times, but that was because Cobalt Blue didn't need to know about those things. At least she could  _pretend_ that this was an interview for an article. Besides, having a distraction from her dead friends, even if it was due to a supervillain with a dumb costume and a mask that, if she was being honest, looked kind of crude, would be nice. 

* * *

“You want me to watch your kids again?” Lisa looked  _ horrified,  _ and Malcolm half wanted to laugh. The other half of him wanted to curl up on the floor and cry until he couldn’t move anymore.  _ “Hell  _ no, I am  _ not  _ watching those terrors again.”

“They’re  _ infants,  _ Lisa,” Malcolm sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Please, I wouldn’t ask unless it was important, I promise. Please. I’ll-I’ll find someone else when it’s time for-for-for the funeral. I swear. But I have to talk to someone. Shawna’s girlfriend. She’s a reporter, she… Please.”

“...Fine,” Lisa sighed. “I’ll do it. But I swear, those kids of yours are a nightmare. I didn’t know that babies could be this high maintenance. I don’t know how Lenny did it all those years with me.”

Malcolm didn’t say anything, instead looking down at the little kids in the crib that Len had somehow stolen the same day that he had brought them home. It had been difficult to assemble, but Malcolm had managed it. The larger twin was fast asleep, the surprisingly large amount of hair that it already had sticking straight up, while the smaller one was wide awake, blinking up at Malcolm with curious brown eyes. 

Malcolm didn’t have a single baby picture, but from what he’d seen when he broke into Barry and Iris’s house the third time (back when he was still trying to kill Barry), the twins were the spitting image of Iris when she had been little.

“They are pretty cute, aren’t they,” Lisa admitted begrudgingly. “They’re loud and annoying, but cute. I’d never have any, though.” She wrinkled her nose. “The superspeed thing just makes it harder.”

Malcolm swallowed. “They look like their mom.”

“Hmm.” Lisa tilted her head to one side. “Yeah, I see it. Never really met West  _ officially, _ but I’ve seen her.”

Malcolm reached into the crib, and the baby that was awake grabbed his pinkie in their teeny tiny fist. They were surprisingly strong for such a little kid, and as Malcolm watched they started to kick their legs at superspeed and let out a small shriek of laughter that was shockingly loud for someone with such small lungs. “I think I love them.”

“Good,” Lisa said, rolling her eyes and nudging him with her elbow. “What kind of dad would you be if you didn’t? Now go, you’re going to be late for your date with Shawna’s girlfriend.”

Malcolm was halfway down the block before he realized that he had forgotten to correct Lisa’s statement that he was the twins’ father.

* * *

“Thanks for coming,” Malcolm muttered, fiddling with the string on his hoodie. He'd flagged Linda down, wearing his mask under his sweatshirt hood, something Linda thought was the funniest thing she'd ever seen. “I know it’s a little weird, but… Thanks.”

Linda Park narrowed her eyes at him. “It wasn’t really a problem. Are you going to take your mask off? It’s not like I’ll know you, you don’t have to tell me your name.”

Malcolm made a small huffing sound. “I-that’s the thing.” He tugged his hood down and tugged at his mask for a second, pulling it off (he was sure his hair looked terrible) and braced himself for her inevitable reaction. “You don’t know me. But you know-knew-my brother.”

He looked up at Linda through his eyelashes, holding her breath. She was completely frozen, eyes wide and shocked, although she hid her surprise pretty well a moment later. “You-you-”

“I know,” Malcolm said, clenching his fists. “My name’s Malcolm. We-we were twins. I didn’t know until I was older that I had a brother, much less that he was-well-”

“The Flash?” Linda supplied. At Malcolm’s surprised look, she shrugged. “How do you think I met Shawna? It’s a long story. But… But I knew that he was the Flash.”

Malcolm nodded and tugged on a strand of his hair a little self-consciously. There were only a few subtle differences between Barry’s face and Malcolm’s, although there was an easier way of telling now that Malcolm had dyed parts of his hair bright blue. But their facial features were almost identical other than their eyes-Barry had their mom’s eyes. Malcolm had Henry’s. Their cheekbones were a bit different too, but that was only noticeable if you were really looking hard. Malcolm supposed he was lucky for looking like Barry-he’d always had a fairly masculine face, which helped a lot even if it was round and his cheeks were soft. “That’s part of the reason why I hated him.”

Linda made a surprised sound. “I-well, I didn’t know before, but now that I do, I thought it’d be something like a friendly rivalry… Although it  _ is  _ weird that he never mentioned you before if it was.”

“Oh, no,” Malcolm said, shaking his head. “I hated him. He was everything I wasn’t. He had a loving family, a steady job, the city practically  _ worshipped  _ him, and I-I was the throwaway, the fuck up, I was the one that our parents didn’t keep. The doctor told them that I was stillborn, but-but-they never-” To his horror, Malcolm found that he was crying. Dammit, he’d been crying so  _ much  _ lately. “I don’t know if I still hate him. I think maybe it’s wrong to hate someone who’s dead? Maybe? But I  _ feel  _ like I still-like I still-”

Malcolm had heard about people who refused to acknowledge when a family member of theirs died, who acted like nothing was wrong until it didn’t hit them until weeks, months, even years later. Malcolm didn’t know why it was so different for him. Maybe it was because he had actually held Barry’s body in his arms, watched Iris’s life bleed out of her without doing anything.

Linda silently handed him a little pack of tissues. Malcolm took it and started methodically shredding them, making Linda wince. “That’s not why-never mind.”

“I’m sorry,” Malcolm apologized, continuing to shred the tissues. “I-I should go. Lisa’s watching the twins, and I don’t want to come back to find that she somehow managed to take them with her on a bank heist or something.”

Linda stiffened. “The twins? You have Henry and Don?”

“Yeah, of course I do. Well, right now  _ Lisa  _ has them, but they’re mine now. Even though I can’t really tell them apart,” Malcolm admitted. He was pretty sure that Len, at least, had figured out that he had  _ no  _ idea which one was which, and regularly switched off which names he was calling them, but Malcolm had hoped to keep it a secret for as long as he could. “I have no clue which is which.”

“I-Henry is the one with the birthmark on his upper arm shaped almost like a star, Don has more hair,” Linda informed him, looking stunned. “And-you  _ have  _ to tell the police that you have the twins, they’re  _ missing  _ and everyone thinks that they’re dead even though none of-none of the blood that they found in the crib was theirs.”

All of the blood drained from Malcolm’s face. Oh. Oh no. Oh, this was  _ bad.  _ “I-”

“You wouldn’t even have legal custody of them,” Linda exclaimed, a slightly hysterical edge entering her voice. This was  _ children  _ they were talking about! Children were on the line! “Cisco’s their godfather, he’s the one-I can’t believe-how did you even get ahold of them?”

“I got there right as the murderer was going to kill them,” Malcolm whispered numbly. “Barry and Iris were already dead, I couldn’t save them, I  _ tried  _ but they wouldn’t heal. And then I realized that the kids were upstairs since that was the whole reason I was there and then I ran upstairs and the killer was right there and I killed him. I burnt him and grabbed him and threw him down the stairs and he died.”

“Joe said he fell on his knife. Stabbed himself.” Linda sounded numb too.

“Yeah. Yeah, he fell on it, and-and he died. And I’m glad. I would’ve burned the body if I didn’t have the kids right there and I just  _ had  _ to get them somewhere safe.” Malcolm started bouncing his leg frantically to calm himself down and tried not to feel like Hugo was breathing down his neck and about to hold his leg down to make him stop.  _ Quiet. _ “I had to.”

“Okay. Okay.” Linda took a deep breath. “Here’s what you’re gonna do. You’re gonna come to the service for him, and you’re gonna bring the kids, and you’re gonna bring them to Joe, and you’re gonna  _ beg  _ him not to arrest you.”

For some reason, the first thing out of Malcolm’s mouth after that was “There’s gonna be a service? Am I supposed to sit shiva?”

“What?” Linda blinked at him. “I mean, of course there’s going to be a service, but-I don’t know? I think Wally is.”

Wally. Malcolm hardly knew him, aside from what he’d seen while watching Barry. Oh, and that time he almost killed the two of them. Malcolm sighed, relieved. “Oh, good, I’ve never done it before. I wouldn’t know what to do. That’s weird, isn’t it? Looking up your own religion online because the people who raised you didn’t actually practice it but your other-”

“Cobalt Blue!” Linda hissed, reaching over the table and smacking his shoulder lightly and cutting off his rambling. “It doesn’t matter! You’re going to do  _ exactly  _ what I told you to do and  _ try  _ not to get arrested.” She stood up, pulling the strap of her purse up onto her shoulder. “Now, I’m leaving. I have an interview to get to.”

He didn't need to know that that was a lie.

“Wait, don’t-” Malcolm stood up and reached for her uselessly.

Linda ignored him. Malcolm couldn’t say he blamed her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I edited this in the ao3 copy-paste thing so there are probably some glaring grammar errors in here that I missed. Whoops.


End file.
